At 11:36 AM -0700 9/7/05, Jean-Marc Perreault wrote:
Greetings!
I'm thoroughly enjoying this return to class! I'm
presently reading up on the distinction between science and
pseudoscience, and although much of the information is not new, it
feels so good to read it again! Going back to the basics!
Anyhow, here's a statement from Stephen Gould (1987) as quoted in
Stanovich, (2004):
"What good to science is a lovely idea that cannot, as a
matter of principle, ever be affirmed or denied?"
I wtend to agree with this idea. Of course, falsifiability is an
essential criterion for any idea to be valuable to science. But
here's the question I have:
Have there been cases where a theory (I'm thinking of Einstein's
theory of relativity, for example, with which I am not very
familiar) has seemed very good, but in practical terms, untestable
with the tools of the time (thus unfalsifiable)? And after a certain
time period had elapsed, the theory was shown to hold up when tools
were developed?
This did in fact happen with Relativity.
A crucial test had to wait about 50 years until the position of the
planet Mercury could be measured with sufficient precision to
demonstrate the Relativity predicted its position more accurately
than did classical Newtonian mechanics.
I'm asking this becasue I already know what will come out in class
when we touch on ESP's... We cannot yet measure the "energies" with
the tools we have. But one day we will... etc.. etc..etc... This
definitely relates to the topic we recently discussed, Healing Touch
(which is starting today at the College... I'll have to go
investigate...)
False analogy.
The existence of the above 'energies' would mean that most of modern
biology and physics were wrong.
This is not a question of needing more accurate measurement; it's one
ofpositing that we might someday be able to measure things that we
currently have no (scientific) reason to believe exist, and that
contradict what we _have_ measured.
--
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mnsu.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
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